Boko Haram has “legitimate grievances” and Nigeria should not rule out talking to the terrorist group, former president Olusegun Obasanjo has said.
“They have legitimate grievances,” he said in an interview with IBTimes UK on the sidelines of the Global Education Forum conference in Dubai.
Obasanjo stated that while 79% of Nigerians received education in the south west of the country and 77% in the south east, in the Boko Haram stronghold of the north east that figure was just 19%.
“We don’t need anyone to tell us that that is a problem. A problem of disparity, a problem of marginalisation. A problem because education is fundamental to your employability, to your living conditions. If you are not educated you are handicapped,” he said.
“The response of the government initially was definitely not enough. When Boko Haram started showing their fangs about four years ago, the reaction should have been firm and unmistakable.
“If Boko Haram is ready to talk, we should talk. But they will need to be pounded a little bit by the military and then, they would be ready to talk,” he said.
The former president went ahead to recommend a carrot-and-stick approach to the insurgency.
“When we were dealing with the carrot aspect, the stick aspect should have been firm. I hope with that, we’ll now go the carrot, the carrot is those things rightly or wrongly perceived as injustice or grievances that can now be dealt with.
“But the false confidence of the militants to go into Chad, Niger and neighbouring countries has now led to a regional coalition of military and that has been reasonably effective; it has not completely solved the problem,” he said.
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